Dolly does the USA...

Evening all. I have been a little quiet of late. This is because I have been swanning around America on a quest to make Man vs. Food look like an amuse bouche. I'm always greedy, but this time I have taken the biscuit.

This year, both my husband and I turn 30. Boo. We decided to mark this milestone with a trip to America. We wanted to experience both the 'hype' and reality, so planned a trip across Nevada through to California, cramming in as much food as we could en route. A lot of our trip was only finalised in the last couple of months, as even some of the locations hinged on whether we managed to get reservations in some restaurants.

Once everything was booked, our trip looked a little like this:
Manchester - Las Vegas - Grand Canyon - Las Vegas - Beatty - Mammoth Lakes - Yosemite National Park - Napa - Yountville - San Francisco - London - Manchester.
The reason you may never have heard of some of these places is probably because there is very little there!

As well as eating in some amazing restaurants (ranging from Hooters to the French Laundry...) we saw some incredible sights and met some mental/lovely people, depending on your outlook. Some of the highlights of the trip included:

• Surviving the 40 C heat of Las Vegas
• Dining with just six other people in the hidden 'é by José Andrés'
• Landing in the Grand Canyon
• The taxi to the car rental place. Our taxi driver was a wealth of knowledge and convinced us we would be eaten by mountain lions. If not, we would die in Death Valley. Friendly chap. 
• Talking to a champion gun slinger whilst eating chilli at Happy Burro
• Finally seeing another car after about 100 miles... and getting my phone signal back...
• Seeing a wolf! (For those of you who know the game... WOLVE!)
• The huge trees and stunning scenery at Mammoth Lakes
• Yosemite National Park's many creeks, lakes and wildlife
• Avoiding running over a baby bear!
• Miles of vineyards in Napa
• The French Laundry's heirloom tomatoes 
• Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge to get into San Francisco
• Walking down Lombard Street and nearly falling over because it's so steep
• Coi knocking our socks off
• Eating some of the best burgers in the world!
• Seeing beer being made at the Anchor brewery (thanks for the tip Chris!)

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be doing posts on the places that we went to, but please be patient! I took over 600 pictures on my iPhone alone so it's taking some time to go through everything we captured! Here are a few of the journey...

Hope you all enjoy the upcoming posts!